What If Your Social Security Was in the Stock Market Yesterday? (X post from Labor Forum)

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/09/30/what-if-your-social-security-was-in-the-stock-market-yesterday

by Seth Michaels, Sep 30, 2008

Yesterday’s stock market disaster, with the Dow plummeting 778 points—a larger drop than after the Sept. 11 attacks—may make Wall Street traders and billionaire hedge fund investors hyperventilate.

But imagine how much worse for the rest of us it would have been if, three years ago, President Bush and Sen. John McCain had succeeded in their efforts to privatize Social Security, gambling in the stock market funds that have been a guaranteed income for America’s retirees?

Many of our 401(k)s and pension plans took a hit yesterday—but no matter how our individual retirements fare on Wall Street, we would still have Social Security to back us up.

Not so if McCain became president.



Because even during this volatile stock market crisis, McCain has repeated his plan to privatize Social Security if he becomes president. McCain has said the way Social Security works is a “disgrace,” and in the Senate, he voted repeatedly to support privatizing Social Security and against protecting Social Security from benefit cuts. He even voted to raid Social Security funds.

In 2005, McCain toured the country with Bush to campaign for Social Security privatization. McCain married into a multimillion-dollar fortune, and he also will have a taxpayer-funded pension because of his decades in Washington. So, despite drawing a monthly Social Security check himself, it’s clear he doesn’t understand how important Social Security is to millions of retirees.

For the vast majority of America’s retirees, Social Security makes up 50 percent or more of their income.

Yet McCain supports a scheme that, if it had been in place now, would have left millions of seniors in poverty yesterday. Retirees who worked their entire life for their Social Security retirement income would have seen little or have nothing to fall back on.

In contrast, Sen. Barack Obama has fought against privatization and other policies that undermine Social Security. He’s pledged to protect Social Security benefits.

There’s only 35 days to go before the election, but McCain’s agenda has already proven disastrous. We can’t trust him to gamble with our economy and our retirement.

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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

[tama]

1. For the captives

of the capitalist system, it was: 401K.

[slackmaster]

3. Actually, many of us who work have both a 401k and Social Security benefits coming

If my SS was privatized, I certainly would not allocate my investments the same way I do in my 401k.

[shanti]

2. this bears repeating!

:kick: